YOUR OBA IS NOT AN OVERLORD IN EDO STATE, IT IS TIME Y'ALL TAKE YOUR OVERLOADSHIP NARRATIVES TO THE BIN.

YOUR OBA IS NOT AN OVERLORD IN EDO STATE, IT IS TIME Y'ALL TAKE YOUR OVERLOADSHIP NARRATIVES TO THE BIN. 

People seem to think we are still living in 1978, when a handful of powerful individuals could manipulate the system, appoint their own judges, manufacture narratives, and expect everyone else to accept them as unquestionable truth.

This is 2026.

People are more educated, more informed, and far more aware of how power has often been used to deny justice rather than uphold it. Nigerians today understand that those entrusted with protecting justice have, at times, been the very ones responsible for injustice.

Take the Gelegele issue, for example. How does a Benin person claim ownership of Gelegele while simultaneously insisting it is "Ughoton"? If Gelegele is truly a Benin settlement, what exactly does "Gelegele" mean in the Edo language?

And let us follow this argument to its logical conclusion. The Egbema people exist on both sides of the state boundary. State creation placed some Egbema communities within present day Edo State and others within Delta State. Are we now expected to believe that the Egbema people in Delta are indigenous to their land, while the Egbema people in Edo are somehow tenants on theirs? Does the creation of a state suddenly erase ancestral ownership and indigenous identity?

What is even more surprising is the attempt by some people to use state creation, local government boundaries, and administrative arrangements as proof of ownership. Since when did political boundaries become the measure of history?

History did not begin with state creation. States and local governments are administrative conveniences created by governments in recent times. They do not determine who first settled a land, who occupied it for generations, or who is indigenous to it. A people do not become strangers on their ancestral homeland because a government official drew a new line on a map.

If your argument depends on the name of a local government or the administrative attachment of a community to another ethnic group, then you are no longer making a historical argument. You are making a bureaucratic one. Indigenousness is established by history, ancestry, settlement, language, culture, traditions, and continuous occupation not by paperwork and political boundaries.

This obsession with claims of overlordship belongs to a different era. This is not the 16th century. No one is an overlord of another people. Communities own the lands they have occupied, lived on, and defended for generations.

You keep saying there is a court case. Fine. Where is the case? Produce it.

Not extracts. Not selected paragraphs. Not letters written by colonial officers, chiefs, or administrators. Not Copies of correspondence that merely reflect someone's opinion.

Bring the judgment itself.

Let us read the case from beginning to end. Let us examine the claims, the evidence presented, the arguments made, and the final decision of the court.

To this day, many who loudly claim victory have never produced the complete judgment. Instead, they circulate letters, and isolated documents, presenting them as though they are substitutes for an actual court ruling.

Administrative boundaries can change. Local government names can change. States can be created and divided. But history remains what it is.

The real question has always been simple: who are the indigenous people of the land? That question can only be answered by history, not by political boundaries, selective documents, or inherited narratives.

The moment someone abandons history and begins relying on state creation, local government structures, and claims of overlordship, they have already revealed the weakness of their case. If there is a judgment, produce it. If there is evidence, present it in full. Until then, stop expecting people to accept selective documents and centuries old assumptions as unquestionable truth.